Amazing Story of Battery Company’s Sale to Chinese Communists

Chinese Communists are brutal people. The Party controls all the businesses and wealth in China. The common people are no more than serfs with their core values being lived in accordance with the dictates of the State.

We do business with them and we borrow from them. We are allowing ourselves to become their serfs as they build up their armed forces along their shores. The day of reckoning will come.

In the meantime, we continue to ignore the threat and naively believe that we will somehow bring them along the path of freedom.

On April 12th of last year, I posted a story about GM’s explosive new battery produced by a company called A123. The battery company received $249 million of our federal tax dollars through grants.

The battery is considered revolutionary. It is also explosive. GM was testing the company’s battery when it exploded, blowing off one side of the building and injuring a worker. GM said it was the result of “extreme testing,” whatever that means.

The battery was slated for GM’s new all-electric car called ‘Sparky’ as part of the new ‘Spark’ line of subcompacts. [No, I’m not being sarcastic] GM was forced to recall the batteries.

A123, a Massachusetts-based electric vehicle battery company, was championed by President Obama but some Republicans also supported funding this company. Six million dollars was given to the company by President Bush.

A more detailed analysis of what went wrong can be read at the Wall Street Journal. It’s complicated.

The company faces a class-action lawsuit for withholding information from its shareholders. Jobs were lost.

Despite significant recalls for defective products, the company blamed the bankruptcy on the collapse of a $465 million rescue deal with the Chinese Communist Party company, Wanxiang Group. Please note that any deal with a Chinese company is a deal with the Chinese Communist Party.

Whatever the case, A123 was forced to sell two factories in Michigan and their automotive business for $125 million to Johnson Controls, which has also been awarded government funding. The factories continued operations until they had to be auctioned off in December of last year. [Livewire]

Now this is where the story gets interesting. When A123 was auctioned off, the high bidder was Wanxiang Group. Remember them from two paragraphs ago? It is owned by one of the wealthiest men in China, a major leader in the Chinese Communist Party. They outbid the Milwaukee-based global company, Johnson Controls, and NEC Corps of Japan.

This battery is revolutionary despite its problems and it does have enormous potential. “It uses lithium iron phosphate which produces longer-life, lighter-weight, higher-power, and more stable batteries that can operate in very low and high temperatures.”

A123 has contracts to supply batteries to the US military which makes the purchase by Chinese Communists more interesting.

…Retired navy Vice Admiral Barry Costello, former commander of the Navy’s Third Fleet, says the sale of A123 will give a big boost to China’s military expansion and warfare capability in space, cyber warfare, and unmanned vehicles, all of which rely on battery power.

One option considered is to sell only the commercial technology to Wanxiang and sell its U.S. defense contracts to a U.S. firm, Navitas Systems. But pretending that A123′s advanced technology can be sold to China only for business purposes is a pipe dream.

A123 employs more than 100 scientists and engineers working on sensitive materials that are part of what is scheduled to be sold to Wanxiang. If China gets access to A123′s commercial applications, it will be easy for China to reverse-engineer the military applications.

If Wanxiang owns A123′s intellectual property and highly skilled technicians, that means controlling today’s battery technology plus a ten-year leap in development. Senators John Thune (R-SD) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) warn that the deal could give Wanxiang “access to these defense contracts and technology used by multiple branches of the U.S. military.”…Please read the full article

To give the other side:

Investors are optimistic about the sale because they will make money.

It will save jobs because the Chinese have made a commitment to keep jobs in the US.

Politico published an article by Dennis Blair, former director of national intelligence and a retired Navy admiral, who is a committed liberal and who served under Barack Obama, and who is supporting the sale. He said that “the lithium battery in no way compromises national security and that it is in the interest of the United States to encourage international trade and investment with China and other countries when it does not affect our national security interests.”

The Obama administration stands behind the sale.

In fact, isn’t A123 just one more failed US company being bought by a puppet company of the Chinese Communist government?

In the ’60s Nikita Khrushchev said that we (the USA) would sell our souls for a dollar. He knew us well.

Why let the Chinese buy another U.S. company and all the technology it has developed? This company has problems but its future is limitless. There are other non-Communist-owned companies who want to purchase the company for close to the same amount paid by the Communist company.

A123 technology is considered the “technology of the decade” and we are selling it to the Chinese Communist Party. China doesn’t have to steal our technology any longer, we are selling it to them.

We report the news the media won't.
The Sentinel provides news, opinion and commentary, analysis, factual and original content, mostly political, usually right-of-center, for a Conservative, Libertarian, and Republican audience.
If you click the subcategories, you should find the general information you need to know about us. Please make special note of the terms of use.
Thank you for taking an interest in our site.
We welcome information, corrections, news stories and submissions.